Airplane travel has revolutionized the ways in which people are transported. While long-distance travel has become much faster and more convenient, flights still often take long periods of time. Aircraft technology and the development of the commercial aviation sector mean that medium- and long-haul flights are becoming more prevalent. Passengers increasingly spend long amounts of time seated on aircraft between takeoff and landing. Consequently, the ability to sleep on commercial flights is increasingly important, and the ability to lie flat has become commonplace in the top-tier cabins of long-haul international flights. However, that is still not possible on the vast majority of domestic US flights, nor on flights in the rapidly expanding low-cost airline sector.
This means the user often encounters several problems. Seats themselves generally do not recline far enough backwards to make them comfortable sleeping options. While some flights are relatively empty, wherein a passenger may have the full row of seats next to them open allowing them to lie down across a row of seats, the passenger may still struggle to sleep due to the discomfort of laying across the row of connected seats. In such cases, the user may find things like the seatbelt buckles, seat divisions, and the limited width of the sleeping surface provided by airline seats to be uncomfortable. What is needed is a means of converting open seats in an otherwise empty row into a fully covered flat surface, without installing specially modified airplane seats. Ultimately, the row can be enclosed to create a small cabin, providing the user with a comfortable and private sleeping space. What is further needed is a means of allowing the user to control the brightness of the created cabin space, and to easily move into and out of the user's seat during takeoff and landing.
Therefore it is an object of the present invention to provide a removable airplane seat mattress that allows a passenger to maximize the use of available space in a row of seats. The present invention is a cantilevered mattress that is attached to one or more airplane seats, wherein the cantilevered mattress extends past the seat cushions, over the footwell in order to maximize the use of available space. The cantilevered mattress includes a mattress pad and at least one cantilever, wherein the at least one cantilever secures the mattress pad to the one or more airplane seats. The mattress pad includes a padded layer on top and a plurality of bottom supports that are spaced along the bottom of the padded layer. The mattress pad can be easily folded or rolled up for storage when not needed. Furthermore, the mattress pad includes a hinged section that allows the passenger to easily uncover the aisle seat, thus enabling the user to buckle into an approved seated position for takeoff and landing. The present invention may further include a seatback cover and a privacy curtain, wherein the seatback cover may provide additional storage and lighting for the user, while the privacy curtain may also provide additional lighting.